How Fighting for Conservative Causes Has Helped Ken Paxton Survive Legal Woes

The impeachment process began after Mr. Paxton and his former aides said in February that they had arrived. $3.3 million settlement in their suitDetachment on the State paying it. Mr. Paxton requested that the funds be included in the budget, but the Speaker of the House, Dade Phelan, said he did not believe it was a good use of taxpayers’ money. Instead, a House committee began investigating the petition and the underlying allegations.

The committee’s impeachment recommendation for Mr. Paxton on Thursday for “serious crimes” marked the first official decision that his actions warranted possible removal from office.

Mr Paxton indicated at his news conference on Friday that he would put up a fight. “The House is poised to do exactly what Joe Biden has been hoping to accomplish since his first day in office,” he said. “Sabotage our job, my job as Texas attorney general.”

Republicans across Texas received text messages on Friday urging them to support Mr. Paxton. The chair of the Republican Party of Texas, a grassroots organization often at odds with establishment leaders, issued a statement calling the impeachment a “fraud” that was “empowering Democrats.”

Dan Rogers, chairman of the Republican Party in Potter County, which includes the city of Amarillo, sent a text message urging people to call their representative and vote for Mr. Paxton. “He stands against the supremacy of the federal government and the ‘deep state’ coming after our state sovereignty and individual sovereignty,” Mr. Rogers said in an interview.

On the House floor Friday, Republican members could be seen talking in small groups before the session began. In one instance, two members leaned over another who was sitting and appeared to quietly but forcefully urge him not to vote.

“It’s hearsay, hearsay, hearsay,” one of them said, referring to articles of impeachment and testimony by House committee investigators.